Beyond Responsiveness: How Human Behaviours Must Shape Your Mobile Website
Beyond Responsiveness: How Human Behaviours Must Shape Your Mobile Website Contents Introduction 3 1. The explosive growth of mobile web
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2. Why mobile-friendly design is crucial
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3. The road to mobile responsiveness
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4. Adapting to multiple screen demands
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5. The rapidly changing mobile browsing culture
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6. Effective testing
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7. Summary
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Introduction There isn’t a single business on the planet that can afford to ignore mobile users, and there is no clearer signal for that than from Google. The search giant has just updated the way it works which is bad news for those whose websites are not optimised for mobile access.
Google’s revised algorithm is now checking for how efficiently structured, well designed and rapidly delivered websites are across the globe for handsets and tablets, as well as the more traditional laptops and desktops. Google explicitly states that mobile pages which deliver a “poor searcher experience can be demoted in rankings or displayed with a warning in search results”. And it is actively promoting well-designed sites with the “Mobile-friendly” tag – and favouring these in search results.
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1 The explosive growth of mobile web It’s difficult to recall a time when we could not access the web on mobile devices and we naturally take for granted that we can get any information we need, search for and buy products, and use social media wherever we are: on the move, in a shop, on a train, in a restaurant…
But it is only around eight years since a workable mobile web was born – with the launch of the iPhone. Before Apple’s game changer, accessing the web on mobile was a painful and expensive business. The network technology available for mobile users had been around since 1989, in the form of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and the first WAP site was launched in 1999 by a Dutch mobile operator, Telfort. WAP delivered a largely text-driven, simplified web experience, with Nokia’s 7110 the first device to handle the protocol. However, the early frenzied excitement was rapidly doused by the harsh reality of poor performance, both on the network side and in the devices, together with additional connectivity costs. In fact, WAP was often referred to as “Wait And Pay”.
User un-friendly Navigation of the mobile web via keypad commands – mobile touchscreens were a practical rarity at the turn of the century – was a big challenge for both developers and users. Even the larger handsets or “communicators” from manufacturers like Nokia and Samsung with stylus facility, were dogged by usability issues. This engineering problem, combined with slow connection speeds, meant that demand for services was very low, with these restricted to news, sports and basic business updates. Despite network speed hikes over the next few years, with 2.5G and then 3G connectivity arriving in the UK by 2003, usability issues continued to hamper fuller mobile web access – until the launch of the iPhone, with its amazing userfriendly interface and touchscreen. The ease of use and fast connections saw rapid development of optimised mobile versions of websites, together with the swift adoption of Responsive Design, delivering optimised content and the best user experience across a range of devices.
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Smartphone bandwagon rolls on
Connected everywhere ‌ almost
The imitator smartphones soon followed Apple’s lead in an explosive period of innovation and development that opened up the Internet to mobile. Between 2010 and 2014 numbers of adults in the UK accessing the web via mobile phone more than doubled to 58%.
The online terrain has been reshaped with the rapid development and maturity of mobile web access, unleashing a broad range of cultural and commercial changes underpinned by fast connection, user-friendly interfaces and well-designed devices.
In 2014, nearly nine out of ten young people aged 16-24 in the UK used their mobile phone or portable device to access the Internet, with the older age groups, particularly people aged between 45-54, also very active, with six in ten using mobile web services. 1
Together, these have enabled many innovations and commercial advances including location-based services, realtime mapping and video on mobile – from entertainment to marketing and social sharing.
77%
of executives use their smartphone to find out about a product or service
Source: IDG Global Mobile Survey 2014
The business environment has been transformed in a similar way and the IDG Global Mobile Survey 2014 advises that 77% of executives use their smartphone to find out about a product or service for their business and half of them have made business purchases on mobile. And people in the US now spend more time online through mobile devices than on fixed PCs.
A combination of fast wireless access and expansion of 4G networks will help to drive further service innovation, although further infrastructure investment from the mobile operators is needed to truly deliver anytime, anywhere fast connectivity.
Missing mobile experience At the same time, the mobile web experience is far from ideal, and last year the Internet Advertising Bureau reported that nearly a third (30%) of the top 50 FMCG businesses in the UK had no mobile presence, while 46% of these brands were failing to provide a mobile-optimised website. But with the recent changes by Google in the way they rank websites, favouring those that are optimised for mobile users, all businesses need to ensure they can deliver the best mobile web experience.
1. Source: ONS
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2 The urgent need for mobile-friendly design What’s changed exactly – and why should brands take notice?
Google has introduced a new global policy that reflects the changing nature of web access and the way people behave online by focussing even more strongly on mobile. Those ‘mobile-friendly’ labels that started appearing in search results towards the end of 2014 have been reinforced by new guidelines and a change to the Google algorithm that will strongly favour websites that are optimised for mobile devices. For every brand, this change is a compelling reason to check and update how their websites work, ensuring that mobile responsiveness is a primary driver. In context, Google reports that in the US, more than three-quarters of searches on mobile are made either at home or at work (77%), even though it’s pretty certain that desktop and laptop computers would be available.
Mobile-only users Clearly, mobile web access will continue to grow and in some developing countries it is the primary and dominant form of connection, with mobile-only users in Egypt, for example, at 70%, and India at 59%.
And while mobile-only users tend to be under the age of 25 in developing nations, there are signs that many older people on lower incomes in countries like the US are also accessing the web only on mobile devices. 1
70%
of people in Egypt only access the web via a mobile device
59%
of people in India only access the web via a mobile device
1. Source: mobiforge/On Device Research
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